Information from TripAdvisor's Master Class

This afternoon I attended the TripAdvisor Master Class in San Diego and wanted to share some information that I found useful.

Brian Payea, Head of Industry Relations at TripAdvisor kicked off the event and shared some great stats, many of which I hadn't seen before. Some to note:

• According to Forrester, 49% of people won't book with a property that has no reviews.

• The vast majority of reviews on TripAdvisor are positive. The average is 3.9. As of October, 2010 the breakdown of stars is:  1 star - 9% 2 stars - 8% 3 stars - 11% 4 stars - 27% 5 stars - 45%

• ~10% of TripAdvisor's traffic comes from mobile, mostly in the form of people surfing during the weekend or at night, when they're not in front of their computers.

• Properties with more than 20 photos get 150% more engagement.

• Today, only 7% of hotels are responding to reviews even though 71% of people say that seeing a management response is important. 79% of people also say that seeing a response to a negative review is reassuring. (Forrester)

• When deciding between 2 hotels, 65% of people say that seeing a management response would sway them to book with the responding hotel. (Forrester)

• But be careful in how you respond. Aggressively worded management responses will do more harm than good according to 60% of the people. (Forrester)

• There are 15,000 TripAdvisor widgets and badges on the Web. TripAdvisor also has a Nearby Widget which shows the highest rated restaurants and attractions near a hotel.

Daniel Edward Craig, former Opus GM and author and hotel consultant amused the crowd with a GM's view of management responses. He urged hotels to respond to reviews in 48 hours, proofread all responses and have the response come from the GM. For more information on Daniel's view of management responses, please review this hosted best practices Webinar from our April event. He also urged hoteliers to formalize their reputation management process. (We will be conducting a Webinar with Daniel on creating a reputation management progam in May.)

At the end, the Q and A session unearthed some great information from Brian Payea.

Q. What should you do if you get a low score, but a glowing review?
A. Hotels should report a problem with the review through the owner's center and explain the issue. The review will be pulled and the traveler will be alerted. Often, the traveler will resubmit after fixing the score.

Q. How does TripAdvisor figure out the Popularity Index Ranking?
A There is a secret sauce but the primary factor is reviews and if you focus on getting great reviews the rest will follow. He also noted that links back to the hotel across the Web also impact the ranking. He made it a point to note that buying a business listing won't help, nor will writing management responses to reviews. In addition, he noted that old reviews don't impact the ranking.

Q. Why do positive reviews vanish?
A. There was a bug late last year but it should be fixed.

 Editor: Alex Rojas writes articles related with technology, social media and marketing. Sponsored by Costa Rica Hotels, Motor de reservas en linea and Travel to Costa Rica